Quick Note: DPJ Decision to Let Cabinet Ministers Choose Their Own Political Appointees Will Come Back to Haunt It

I called the looming political challenge over the DPJ rollback of the FY2009 supplementary budget. The next problem in my view is the reconciliation of the Ministers’ right under the Hatoyama edict, the Cabinet’s pro forma right to choose political appointees, and Ichiro Ozawa’s free hand in selecting DPJ members for party and Diet posts? If deciding how to make the Ozawa group swallow Hirohisa Fujii’s candidacy for the MOF portfolio, imagine how difficult it is going to be to decide what to do simultaneously with 17 Cabinet posts and more than 80 other Diet member political appointees, as well as… You see the point.